BuddyPress has a function (bp_member_profile_data) that pulls profile data into a members loop which looks like this:

<?php
bp_member_profile_data( 'field=Organization' );
bp_member_profile_data( 'field=Brief Biography' );
/***
* If you want to show specific profile fields here you can,
* but it'll add an extra query for each member in the loop
* (only one regardless of the number of fields you show):
* bp_member_profile_data( 'field=the field name' ); */
?>

I'm wondering how to limit the echoed length of Brief Biography. I've looked at the Bavatosan example and substr but they're kind of beyond me at this point in terms of knowing where to modify them.